Verification and validation of Large Eddy Simulation of attached cavitating flow around a Clark-Y hydrofoil

Abstract

This study uses implicitly filtered Large Eddy Simulation with a homogenous cavitation model to investigate the transient turbulent cavitating flow around a Clark-Y hydrofoil with emphasis on Verification and Validation (V&V). The numerical results indicate that the present simulation can predict the time evolution process of the periodic cavity shedding and agree reasonably with the available experimental data. This study presents the first practical application of LES V&V in a transient cavitating flow. The three-equation method is used to assess the LES error magnitudes in unsteady cavitating flow. The results show that a noticeable difference can be observed between the modeling error and numerical error, and the former has a larger magnitude than the latter in cavitating flow. It is demonstrated that the unsteady cavitation has a big impact on the LES errors. Additionally, compared with non-cavitating flow, the unsteady cavitation increases the values and fluctuation amplitudes of numerical, modeling, and total errors. Grid requirement for modeling the cavitating flow has been discussed from the viewpoint of LES V&V. The numerical results also reveal that the periodic cavity shedding causes the complex and turbulent flow feature by vortex and spectrum analyses, and this has a great influence on the simulation accuracy.